


Looks

by Caedmon



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I blame crazygirlne for this, My First Work in This Fandom, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 19:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6208102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard Snart has been getting shitty looks from his peers since he was a kid. Why should that change, now that he's chosen a new life?</p><p>Except that now, one person does look at him differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looks

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! 
> 
> This is my first work in the LoT fandom, although I've done a fair amount of writing for Olicity. crazygirlne made me do this, and I'm super mad at her ~~even though I know she's not remotely sorry and I'm not really mad at her~~. 
> 
> I own nothing but the mistakes. Those are all mine.  
> Comments and kudos feed the muse and are greatly appreciated. <3  
> Thank you for reading!!  
> Come talk to me! caedmonfaith.tumblr.com

Leonard Snart is used to getting shitty looks from his peers. He’s been getting them since he was a kid. 

When he was younger, some of the kids looked at him with scorn and revulsion, staring at his dirty, ripped, second-hand clothes. He hadn’t given a shit. He had too much going on in his life to care about what some snot-nosed pissant in a “Slippery When Wet” t-shirt thought about him. 

Some of kids had looked as if they were afraid of him, with his narrowed eyes, menacing sneer and bruised knuckles. Even as a child, he’d been proud of his ability to inspire that kind of reaction in the people around him. When people feared you, they either got the hell out of your way or did whatever the fuck you said. Both of those pleased Len a great deal. 

The one look he got sometimes, though, the one that grated on him like sandpaper on road rash - the one he couldn’t _stand_ \- was the doe-eyed look of pity from some of the bleeding hearts. It made an appearance, sometimes, when they’d see the bruises left by his shithead of a father when he tried to block the blows meant for Lisa or his mother.

As if they’d never seen pain before. 

As if they didn’t know what real life looked like when it left its mark on a person. 

Leonard Snart knew exactly what real life looked like. He’d learned at an incredibly tender age.

While most kids were playing catch with their dads, Len was getting frisked at Iron Heights so he could sit behind chicken-wired glass and have his dad tell him all about how Earl, in for grand theft auto and housed four cells down, tried to pull a dirty deal with a rival gang and got shanked. 

Some kids got camping trips with Boy Scouts. Len got visiting hours in a dirty holding cell.

That was real life, Snart style.

The older Len got, the more he learned about real life and about the fine details of pulling off burglaries. He learned about freezing metals, and the benefits of cold as a device to make people do what you want. 

Then he learned about how far he was willing to go with human life in the balance. 

Turned out, he was willing to go pretty damned far.

Then Len got pinched when he was fourteen and ended up in Juvie, where he met Mick. Hot and cold combined, and together they set out to explore the criminal underworld of Central City. 

*~*~*~*  
Leonard Snart is no longer fourteen. And he doesn’t have Mick, either. Not anymore. He’s chosen a different path, a different group of people. He’s changed. A new man.

Len is no fool, and he doesn’t waste time on hope. Decades may have passed, but when Len comes back from solving the problem of Mick’s betrayal, he is faced with the same variety of shitty looks on the faces of the people he’s chosen as a team as he saw on the classmates and peers chosen for him by simple geography. 

He shouldn’t be surprised, and when he realizes he’s disappointed, his anger and bitterness becomes a little more self-directed. _Stupid._

Rip and Stein look just a little disgusted, more than a little appalled by what they think he’s done. He merely narrows his eyes and silently defies them to say anything. 

Kendra and Ray, the newly minted couple, are both sporting wary looks. Makes sense, he supposes. They both seem like the hero types who’ve never had to get their hands dirty, anyway. No skin off his teeth.

Jax is looking at him with sympathy and understanding, and Len fights the urge to backhand the kid. Jax is a wet-behind-the-ears kid, a nineteen-year-old boy who had a free ride before he blew out his knee. Tough break, sure, but what’s one year of working in a garage supposed to be? Life experience?

He ignores them all, barely sparing any of them a glance. Just a flick of the eyes to each of their faces to gauge their response to his actions. The only face he cares about is Sara’s. Hers is the only opinion that matters, and he doesn't spare a thought to why.

Hers is the only face his eyes linger on for more than a heartbeat. 

She is impassive, and he realizes that that’s the only reaction he would have wanted or expected from her. 

He walks right by her, not acknowledging her, and knows that that’s the only reaction she would have wanted or expected from him. 

Without a word, Len goes to the one place he knows he can be almost entirely alone. He doesn’t want their pity, their fucking sympathy, their poorly-hidden aversion to him. Fuck them. He doesn’t need their bolstering or pats on the shoulder. He doesn’t need to hear stories about how they’ve all lost friends. No, none of that bullshit. He needs to go somewhere quiet. He needs to gather his thoughts. He needs…

He refuses to articulate what he needs. Not even within his own mind. 

Len doesn’t bother to close the door behind himself. Sara will come. It’s not a matter of ‘if’. It’s only a matter of ‘when’. 

He tosses his cold gun onto the couch, then unzips his jacket. It seems that the slide of the zipper releases his thoughts, allowing them to blow through his mind - a typhoon of emotions and memories battering him at every turn.

The door closes behind him with a gentle _click_ , and he hopes that the motion of shrugging out of his jacket covers the little jerk of his shoulders at the sound. He’s too tense, the sound shouldn't have startled him. He forces himself to relax.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Sara,” he says.

“I didn’t come to talk.” Her voice is calm, soothing, but not patronizing.

“Then why are you here?” He takes the jacket and tosses it over the gun.

“Because you shouldn’t be alone.”

“What if I want to be?” He turns to look at her, and hopes that she can’t hear the thoughts screaming in his brain, among which are _Mick_ and _Stupid_ and _No_ and _Please_ and _Run_ and _Sara_ and _Stay_. There is still an assessing look in her eyes, but also a warmth that he isn’t accustomed to and would reject out of hand from anyone but her.

“You have a choice, Len. You can be alone with your thoughts, or I can stay with you and help keep them at bay. I’ve done it both ways. One is preferable to the other, trust me.”

He tries to focus on what she’s said for a minute, but his howling mind won’t let him. Without thinking first, he opens his mouth. “Mick has always been around before. We drank beer and threw darts.”

“We’ll drink Red Stripe, if that’s what you want. And I’m sure we can scare up a dartboard.”

Something isn’t connecting in Len’s brain, some point A isn’t quite touching point B, but he can’t figure out what it is or how to make them meet. Apparently his confusion and dismay shows on his face, because she speaks again. 

“You had to do it, Len.”

He doesn’t take the time to worry that she has read him so easily, nevermind that he let his emotions show. Something quiet at the back of his mind - still heard over the madness - says that it's okay. 

“You don’t know what I did.”

“I don’t care what you did. You had to make a choice. You chose yourself.”

“I chose you,” he says before he means to, and _there_ it is. There’s point A and point B, and a spark flares to life. _He chose her over Mick_. 

“No,” she corrects him, gently. “He didn’t just betray _us_. He betrayed _you._ Mick tried to kill _you_ , too. He’d do it again. You chose yourself, Len.”

His mind is swirling again, and he sits on the couch beside his coat and gun. Did Mick betray him because of Len’s own betrayal? Who really ruined their little team? Who betrayed who first? Chicken or egg? 

Does it matter? It doesn't. Mick is gone. No more hot and cold. Just lukewarm. Up is down and down is up.

Sara perches herself on the arm of the chair beside him. She doesn’t touch him, and he’s glad. He couldn’t bear the warmth of someone’s touch right now. He is too ragged, too raw. He deserves the cold misery he feels, and although he’s made a career of it, he can’t take what he doesn’t deserve right now. Not from Sara. 

“For the record, I’m glad you made the choice you did,” she says gently, with more gentleness than he is worthy of.

“I chose you,” he mutters, without thinking. 

“I know,” she whispers, then touches her hand to his hair, gently. 

Len leans into the touch and realizes that he was wrong - he may be a wretched man who deserves nothing but misery in life - he’ll never deny that. But he’ll never deny Sara Lance if she wants to give him what he doesn’t deserve, either.


End file.
